


wild cards

by smforwar



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SHINee, SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Strip Poker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smforwar/pseuds/smforwar
Summary: It’s a warm night in Los Angeles (it’s always a warm night in Los Angeles) the members of SuperM are playing Strip UNO (because the majority of them didn’t know how to play poker) and Mark Lee is about to lose his mind (because Jongin is down to his sweatpants, and Mark is only human.)
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Kim Jongin | Kai/Mark Lee (NCT)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 220





	wild cards

It’s a warm night in Los Angeles (it’s always a warm night in Los Angeles) the members of SuperM are playing Strip UNO (because the majority of them didn’t know how to play poker) and Mark Lee is about to lose his mind (because Jongin is down to his sweatpants, and Mark is only human.)

Let’s dial it back.

It starts with a bored Baekhyun, and a bored Baekhyun is a dangerous thing. 

SuperM has just begun their second round of promotions in America, and this time they have a lot more time to themselves between interviews, junkets, and shows. Rattling around the massive Hollywood Hills house by themselves for the second night in a row, with no set schedule the next morning, the hyungs have gotten bored, started to drink, and all hell has broken loose. 

And people say it’s the young ones you have to watch out for, Mark thinks to himself for the tenth time, watching Taemin giggle upside down on the couch as Baekhyun cracks open his third beer. Taeyong stares apprehensively from the corner at Ten and Lucas, who have given in to Jongin’s cajoling and started in on drinks of their own. 

“Strip poker!” Baekhyun shouts for the third time. 

“Hyung, no one but us knows how to play,” Mark tells him again. “Besides, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard for so many reasons.” Among those reasons, Mark reminds himself, is the fact that he got so flustered watching Jongin swimming earlier that he had to go inside and take a cold shower. He’d rather not give a repeat performance stripped down to his own boxers. 

But Ten– demon Ten; evil, devil child Ten– has produced a pack of UNO cards from his suitcase and is already beginning the process of teaching everyone the rules. Everyone who would normally protest a stripping game of any kind is either too tipsy to care (read: Jongin, Taemin, Lucas) or too shy to speak up (dear sweet Taeyong, and, after a certain point, Mark.) 

Ten and Baekhyun preen at their dual success and quickly assemble everyone into a circle on the plush carpet. It’s decided that the person with the most points left in their hand at the end of each round will have to take off an item of clothing.  
“Does jewelry count?” Taeyong asks, eyeing Ten’s many earrings and seeming to calculate how many bracelets he can go put on before anyone notices. Taeyong is already wearing two shirts, a jacket, jeans, a belt, socks and shoes– Mark figures he’s in better shape to win than just about anyone else here. Most of them are just in sweatshirts, T-shirts, and sweatpants. 

“Jewelry stays on,” Lucas replies, also eyeing Ten’s earrings for what seems to Mark like an entirely different reason. 

“Okay, can we agree that once you get down to your underwear you’re out?” Mark attempts, trying to limit the amount of embarrassment that awaits him. 

“Seems fair,” Jongin says, and Taemin and Taeyong nod. Baekhyun protests for a moment but ultimately gives in. His nudist agenda will have to wait for another opportunity.

Mark takes a healthy chug of his beer, reminds himself to chill the fuck out, and begins to deal.

Cards in hand, everyone begins to look around the circle, predicting who will lose clothes first. Across the circle from Mark, Ten looks far too satisfied with his hand– Mark notes him as an early threat. Lucas looks (as usual) happily confused, both by his cards and also possibly by Ten’s thigh pressed against his hip. 

Taemin and Baekhyun have their heads together to Mark’s left, giggling over both their hands– Mark is pretty sure this is against the rules, but he isn’t prepared to fight that battle today. Taeyong is quietly reading the rulebook to Mark’s right, and next to him, Jongin is looking– oh, well, he’s looking right at Mark. Jongin shoots him a small smile, then– oh no, that’s a wink. 

Mark chokes on his beer and looks quickly back down at his cards. This is going to be so bad. 

The game gets going quickly, despite a continued misunderstanding of the general rules by about half the group. Taemin is the first to lose his cardigan, followed by Taeyong’s shoes, Jongin’s jacket, Baekhyun’s sweatshirt, Ten’s socks, and to everyone’s great entertainment, Lucas’s socks, sweatshirt, and T-shirt. 

“Yah, it’s so cold!” Lucas shouts, grinning and shivering in only his sweatpants; a truly absurd amount of caramel skin and muscles on display. 

“We shouldn’t have let this happen so fast,” Baekhyun mutters. “Now we’re all going to look like malnourished ghosts next to this fucker.” 

Ten shakes his head emphatically– this appears to be the best day of his life– but Mark is in complete agreement with Baekhyun. He’d thought the worse thing about this game would be having to strip to his underwear in the first place, but doing it next to his atrociously attractive groupmates is about to be a real exercise in self-contempt. Mark knows he looks okay with his shirt off, but compared to Lucas and– cough– Jongin, he feels like a sun-starved twelve-year-old girl. 

The game had continued during Mark’s internal struggle, and all of a sudden he is acquiring extra cards at an alarming rate. Before he knows it, Taemin is crowing “UNO,” and Mark has lost his first hand.

Off goes his sweatshirt, and as his head appears from the baggy material, Mark catches Jongin’s eye again. Lucas is right– it is cold in the room without a sweatshirt, goosebumps cropping up along Mark’s now-exposed arms– but he feels a flash of heat as he watches Jongin lean forward– now only wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants– to pick up a new hand; all golden skin and bare feet and tousled silver hair. 

Mark mentally slaps sense back into himself. He has to focus, or he’ll be wearing a lot less in no time. 

Mark loses his socks quickly, but his shirt and pants survive the next few rounds. Ten runs into a streak of bad luck (or is it?) and he removes his sweatshirt and shirt in short order, cuddling up next to Lucas “for warmth.” The tips of Lucas’s ears are bright red, an uncharacteristically tight grip on his beer at odds with his giant smile. 

Baekhyun and Taemin lose in quick succession, bickering good-naturedly over the rules again. Taeyong’s good luck streak wears out too, and suddenly Mark and Jongin are the only two not shirtless. They seem to be in something of a stalemate, and Jongin keeps smiling at Mark and using all his wild cards to target him, and all of a sudden it’s like they’re only competing with each other. 

To get each other naked. 

Or something.

Which is not how Mark Lee wanted this to go. (He didn’t. Really.) 

The game goes south quickly from there– while Mark and Jongin are engaged in their own personal UNO war, everyone else starts losing rapidly. Taemin is the first to lose his pants, and he bows out of the game to Baekhyun’s shouts of betrayal. Taeyong is next, and as soon as his scrawny legs hit the cold AC, he gathers his pile of clothes and scampers off to the safety of his room. 

The circle gets smaller as Taemin disappears to go rummage for snacks. Baekhyun draws closer to Mark’s left, Ten and Lucas shuffle in on his right, and Jongin moves forward to sit mere feet across from Mark. Which means that when Jongin promptly loses the next round, all Mark can suddenly see is.... skin.

He’s not sure why this is worse than seeing Jongin shirtless any other time, like in the dressing room or in the pool, but it is. It just is. Jongin is just sitting there with his stupid perfect body, in his soft sweats, ears pink, staring at the floor with an embarrassed smile, and Mark Lee wants to fucking die. Or kiss him. Or eat him. Or yeah, just die. 

“Anyone want another beer?” Mark chokes out, because he literally has to drink something. Everyone waves him off, but Jongin nods. Mark trips over Lucas’s leg (why are they so long) and retreats to the kitchen to have a very brief gay meltdown. It’s fine. He’s fine. 

Mark returns to the game, leaning down to hand Jongin his beer, and trying (failing) to ignore the brush of their hands as they meet on the cold can. 

The game begins again, and Lucas and Ten bail out in quick succession. Ten drags a blushing Lucas to his room to do god knows what, and Mark takes a second to re-orient himself with his situation. He’s left with Baekhyun on his left, shirtless and pale in his jeans, and by now extremely drunk; and Jongin even closer across from him, cross-legged with his knees nearly touching Mark’s. And of course, Jongin’s abs and arms and chest just out there for the world to see. 

Baekhyun is so far gone that he loses before the next round even really begins. He lays down on the couch in his briefs and promptly begins to snore softly. Mark covers him with a blanket, just to give himself something to do, then turns around to look at Jongin. 

“Want to stop here, or keep playing?” Jongin asks softly. He seems shy all of a sudden– he’s doing the thing Mark’s seen him do when he’s wearing crop tops in interviews, where Jongin tries to cover his abs nonchalantly with his forearms. It gives Mark a spark of confidence. 

“We can keep going, if you want. Unless you want to admit defeat.” Mark sits back down and shoots Jongin a shaky smile– he can do this, he tells himself. It’s just a game. 

Jongin hesitates for a minute, and then picks up the cards and begins dealing. It turns out that UNO with only two people takes a lot longer. Mark and Jongin sit knee-to-knee, and after about five minutes Mark is ready to die again. It’s just that Jongin smells so good, and his skin looks so soft, and his hair is falling in his face in this way that makes his jawline look fucking insane, and oh god Mark is so so gay for his hyung. 

Jongin is down to two cards. Mark has five. Jongin looks up, winks again, and lays down a red card. 

“UNO,” he whispers. Mark tells himself Jongin’s being quiet because he doesn’t want to wake up Baekhyun, still on the couch, and not because he has any sort of qualms about beating Mark. 

Mark sighs, steels himself, and shucks off his shirt. 

Holy fuck, it is cold. Mark shivers and stares at the carpet for a good couple seconds before looking back up at Jongin. Who is… noticeably flushed all of a sudden. Huh. 

“It’s cold,” Mark tells him. Groundbreaking stuff, Mark Lee. Great work. 

Jongin shifts minutely closer. “We can be done if you want. There’s no point to continuing if you’re uncomfortable." 

“You don’t seem cold,” Mark replies dumbly, staring at the flush on Jongin’s high cheekbones. At his words, the pink quickly spreads to Jongin’s collarbone, and he studies the carpet intently. 

“Okay, let’s finish this up then, yeah?” Jongin says, looking back up at Mark through his ruffled silver bangs, and leaning back on his stupid, stupid arms. Mark feels decidedly tipsy and off-balance. He also feels way too turned on to be approaching a reality in which he has to take his pants off in front of Jongin. He’s never going to forgive Baekhyun and Ten for this. 

Mark accepts his impending humiliation and begins to deal. The game proceeds slowly again– Jongin fucks Mark over with a series of skip-turn cards, and Mark rallies by using his wild-cards against him. 

Then, finally, Mark has one card in his hand, and it’s over. He looks up at Jongin, who swallows hard and in one swift motion, lifts his hips up and pulls off his sweatpants. 

If you ask Mark, Jongin’s legs are an underrated national treasure. Everyone seems to get distracted by the face and the abs and the arms, but the legs… those things are what make Jongin a star. They should be insured for a gazillion dollars, like Taylor Swift’s. 

But luckily no one has ever asked Mark how he feels about Jongin’s legs, and now he’s just staring at the miles of gold skin stretched out on the carpet in front of him, and the silence has turned awkward, and so Mark fumbles for his beer and finishes it off in one long gulp. 

“Congrats,” Jongin says quietly, blushing pink all the way up to his ears again. Mark’s sure his own face is a much less attractive bright red. 

Baekhyun chooses this moment to let out a deafening snore, and Jongin dissolves into laughter. Tension broken, Mark gathers up the discarded cards and stands up to head to bed. Jongin grabs his clothes and follows him down the hall, when– oh no. 

Mark stops at the door of his room; the room that he’s just now remembering he shares with Ten. Ten, who disappeared into it a half hour ago with Lucas in hand. As if on cue, a loud giggle rings out from behind the door. 

Fuck. 

Mark is pretty sure no human has ever been as red as he currently is at this moment, as Jongin comes to an abrupt stop behind him. Mark waits to hear him move on, or laugh, or give a casual “good luck!” But of course not. That’s not Jongin, no matter the circumstances. 

“Room with me,” Mark hears from behind him. He closes his eyes. He's not going to survive the night. 

The hyungs all got their own rooms this time around, so Mark follows Jongin down the hall to his single. He walks in the room.

Of course there’s one bed. 

There’s always one bed.


End file.
